Features

In a 38-year professional music career, Ricky Skaggs has pretty much seen it all. Now he’s seen just a little more.

Arm in arm with his daughter, Molly, and his son, Luke, the Skaggs were afforded a special treat Saturday, courtesy of L&C Railway and See Lancaster.

The Skaggs family, and their respective bands, Kentucky Thunder and Songs of Water, enjoyed a L&C luxury train ride excursion to the Catawba River and back before performing at the University of South Carolina at Lancaster on Saturday night.

The late Hobert Skaggs always had a hidden reason behind everything he did.

The mandolin that 5-year-old Ricky Skaggs found in his bed one Saturday morning some 50 years ago, and the G, C and D chords that Hobert taught his son weren’t just learning tools and a musical instrument.

It was Hobert’s connection to his Eastern Kentucky childhood that was lost when his brother was killed in World War II.

Smart, an ex-death row inmate, had the opportunity to speak to students at Buford Middle, Andrew Jackson High and Buford High schools about that very thing Thursday.

“I can tell you plenty about making the wrong ones,” Smart said during a telephone interview Wednesday. “I spent 46 of the 50-plus year span from March of 1955 to September of 2005 in prison for the bad choices I made. I would say that makes me an authority on what not to do.”

With their distinctive four-part harmonies and combination of country and bluegrass-tinged tunes, Little Big Town is sure to lure a few more fans into their fold on Saturday.

That’s when the up-and-coming country group performs as part of See Lancaster’s Performing Arts Series at the University of South Carolina at Lancaster’s Bundy Auditorium. The four-time Grammy Award-nominated band is the third act to be featured in the 2009-10 series.

The stack of July 22, 2009, issues of The Lancaster News in the newspaper morgue is getting shorter.

Just about once a week now, the voice on the other end of the phone makes the same request.

“I cut out the recipe for that Butter Pecan Pound Cake that has the icing mixed into the batter, but I don’t know what I did with it. Can you tell me how to get another copy of it? That thing is perfect with a cup of coffee.”